But the sergeant had touched his horse with the spur,
and was already trotting off in the wake of his men.
Andre-Louis continued to laugh, quite silently, as
he sometimes did when the humour of a jest was peculiarly
keen.

Then he turned slowly about, and came back towards
Pantaloon and the rest of the company, who were now
all grouped together, at gaze.

Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both hands out-held.
For a moment Andre-Louis thought he was about to
be embraced.

“We hail you our saviour!” the big man
declaimed. “Already the shadow of the
gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very
marrow. For though we be poor, yet are we all
honest folk and not one of us has ever suffered the
indignity of prison. Nor is there one of us
would survive it. But for you, my friend, it
might have happened. What magic did you work?”

“The magic that is to be worked in France with
a King’s portrait. The French are a very
loyal nation, as you will have observed. They
love their King — and his portrait even better
than himself, especially when it is wrought in gold.
But even in silver it is respected. The sergeant
was so overcome by the sight of that noble visage
— on a three-livre piece — that his anger
vanished, and he has gone his ways leaving us to depart
in peace.”

“Ah, true! He said we must decamp.
About it, my lads! Come, come... "

“But not until after breakfast,” said
Andre-Louis. “A half-hour for breakfast
was conceded us by that loyal fellow, so deeply was
he touched. True, he spoke of possible gardes-champetres.
But he knows as well as I do that they are not seriously
to be feared, and that if they came, again the King’s
portrait — wrought in copper this time —
would produce the same melting effect upon them.
So, my dear M. Pantaloon, break your fast at your
ease. I can smell your cooking from here, and
from the smell I argue that there is no need to wish
you a good appetite.”

“My friend, my saviour!” Pantaloon flung
a great arm about the young man’s shoulders.
“You shall stay to breakfast with us.”

“I confess to a hope that you would ask me,”
said Andre-Louis.

CHAPTER II

THE SERVICE OF THESPIS

They were, thought Andre-Louis, as he sat down to
breakfast with them behind the itinerant house, in
the bright sunshine that tempered the cold breath
of that November morning, an odd and yet an attractive
crew. An air of gaiety pervaded them. They
affected to have no cares, and made merry over the
trials and tribulations of their nomadic life.
They were curiously, yet amiably, artificial; histrionic
in their manner of discharging the most commonplace
of functions; exaggerated in their gestures; stilted
and affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed,
to belong to a world apart, a world of unreality which
became real only on the planks of their stage, in
the glare of their footlights. Good-fellowship
bound them one to another; and Andre-Louis reflected
cynically that this harmony amongst them might be
the cause of their apparent unreality. In the
real world, greedy striving and the emulation of acquisitiveness
preclude such amity as was present here.